1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electronic image pickup apparatus for picking up an object image such as an image on a blackboard, and outputting the image to a printer, for example.
2. Description of the Related Art
When an explanation is presented by using a blackboard at a meeting or the like, it is desired that the contents written on the blackboard should be easily recorded.
In order to meet such a desire, a blackboard having a copying function, a so-called electronic print board, has been used. A technique for such an electronic print board is disclosed in, e.g., U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,687,318 and 4,733,271.
Since such an electronic print board has a copying function itself, the apparatus inevitably has a large size. It is, therefore, difficult to move the apparatus between meeting rooms.
Under the circumstances, an electronic image pickup apparatus has been developed. In this known apparatus, an object image such as an image on a blackboard or the like is optically input upon size reduction, the reduced image is scanned by an image pickup device to obtain an image signal, and the image signal is recorded on recording paper. Since such an electronic image pickup apparatus is separated from a blackboard, the apparatus can be moved between meeting rooms. For example, a technique for this type of electronic image pickup apparatus is disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,074,324 and 5,067,028.
The above-described electronic image pickup apparatus is designed to simply pick up an image on a blackboard or the like and print it. However, in order to simultaneously record synthesis data (to be synthesized), e.g., frame, date, and subject data, a user must additionally write them.
In order to eliminate such an inconvenience, some apparatus is designed to switch between a picked-up image and synthesis data by means of a switch so as to output synthesized image signals to a printing unit, as disclosed in, e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 4,013,876.
In this apparatus, however, since a picked-up image and synthesis data are switched by means of a switch, output synthesized image signals must be switched by the switch with high precision in accordance with the timing of the printing unit so as to perform time division inputting of two types of data, resulting in complicated timing control.
A page buffer may be used to create a synthesized print image corresponding to one page in advance. For this purpose, however, a one-page memory is required. In addition, a printing operation cannot be started until an image pickup operation of one frame is completed, and creation of a synthesized image is completed in the page buffer.